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By the time you are reading this, we will have travelled to both
Venice and Dubrovnik, not our first visit (and I very much hope not
the last), so I will be in an excellent position to tell you how
guilty and remorseful I feel.

Will I be reporting back cheerily on what a wonderful time we
had, or will I be slinking into the office, face hidden by an
upturned collar and dark glasses, full of shame that I have earned
the righteous ire of both cities, and UNESCO?

I mention UNESCO not because I like dropping names (I hate it,
and I said as much to Jeremy Paxman when I met him the other week),
but rather because they have been in the news of late, along with
Venice and Dubrovnik, and all for the same reason: it would seem
that none of them like cruise ships. Venice, as you may know, has
long struggled with the Faustian pact they made when they located
the cruise terminal so that it had to be accessed via the Grand
Canal.

And certainly if you are onboard, then that unhurried journey to
the dock, edging past the Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Square, can
be a truly wonderful experience. That said, the appeal, if you are
land-side and watching this peregrination, depends entirely which
ship you are watching. If it's a modestly proportioned SeaDream,
say, or a Crystal Esprit, then that sort of works. But if
it's one of these monstrous new cruise ships, all 18 plus decks,
seriously towering above the spires of Venice, it really does looks
like nothing less than a monstrous tower block is slowly on the
move. It can, in summary, excessively detract from the serenity of
La Serenissima, and my sympathies in this area lie entirely with
the Venetians.

But the Venetians, who you might have hoped had inherited the
critical artistic eyes of a Canaletto, are actually and sadly not
objecting to these mega-ships on aesthetic grounds. Their problems
are mainly with the enormous numbers of day-trippers that the
cruise ships bring, people who (in the words of the protest
organiser) "just want to take a selfie in St Mark's Square, before
they go back to their ships", bringing no lasting economic benefit,
and much chaos, to the city.

A diversion. I confess that I have nothing but sympathy with him
here: I personally would make the taking of narcissistic selfies an
illegal activity, and require that the miscreant is ritually
stripped of their phone in some Dreyfusian public ceremony in St
Mark's Square, before having the offending selfie stick broken
across the knee and cast away.

And (to get us back on track) one hears much the same complaints
emanating from Dubrovnik as well, where last year over 500 cruise
ships called in, disgorging well over three quarters of a million
passengers. There, the protests' leader bemoaned the parsimony of
cruise ship passengers, complaining that "they have only about
three hours, after docking and disembarkation - 16 hours should be
the minimum". It's hard not to be sympathetic, although the notion
of a fixed and enforced time ashore before you are allowed to
embark your ship again is perhaps a bit bizarre.

But this year the authorities embraced a solution which seems
equally odd, although time will doubtless tell. Cameras are mounted
at all entrances to the Old City, and they are designed to count,
and restrict, the number of people passing through. If visitor
numbers are at 6,000 or lower, no action is taken, but if the
number exceeds 6,000 then the crowds will be slowed down through
longer waiting times at the gates. And should those numbers exceed
8,000 then nobody will be allowed in until some people leave, with
the effect that gaining entrance to Dubrovnik will become rather
like queuing for a space in a busy NCP car park; waiting for
another car to leave before you are allowed to take your ticket. A
tad irritating if you had planned for the walls of Dubrovnik to be
the high point of your holiday, but one can understand where they
are coming from, yes? Cruise line passengers are an imposition,
yes?

Well, no, not really; both cities would seem to be trying to
have it both ways. I can, for instance, sympathise with Venetians
on an individual level, but they must look to their own rulers if
they want to apportion blame rather than to the cruise ships, not
least because (and this fact surprised me) cruise passengers
constitute under 10% of the tourists that descend on Venice every
year, and data shows they spend more there than the average
visitor. The problem for The Floating City would seem to lie with
tourism, not just with cruising.

Likewise, Dubrovnik is spending a fortune advertising itself all
over the world as a centre for tourism, especially focussing on its
fame as possessing the main location settings for "Game of
Thrones". Indeed, tourism accounts for some 20% of Croatian GDP,
and the Dubrovnik Port Authority are now announcing some serious
shopping mall development near the port so that more people can be
enticed from ships to shops. All of which makes me think that
perhaps that sound you can hear, above the ringing of Croatian cash
registers, is the serious munching of someone having his cake and
eating it.

And that's why, sorry UNESCO, I am not going to feel any guilt
or shame in delighting in my Adriatic trip. And if you too want to
wallow in this guilt-free approach to your holidays, then do give
us a call at Wells Street, and we promise to help you feel
shamelessly content and happy...